"Giorgione is regarded as a unique figure in the history of art: almost no other Western painter has left so few secure works and enjoyed such fame..." Sylvia Ferino-Pagden.

My website, MyGiorgione, now includes my interpretations of Giorgione's "Tempest" as "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt"; his "Three Ages of Man" as "The Encounter of Jesus with the Rich Young Man"; Titian's, "Sacred and Profane Love" as "The Conversion of Mary Magdalen"; and Titian's "Pastoral Concert" as his "Homage to Giorgione".

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Titian’s Assunta, the magnificent, huge
altarpiece that dominates the basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, the
Franciscan center in Venice, established him as the foremost painter in Venice,
and set him on his way to international stardom.

The painting is an oil on
panel that because of its size required 24 panels in all. It measures 690 cm by
360 cm, or 22 feet, 8 inches by 11 feet, 10 inches. During the nineteenth
century it was removed from the Frari and placed in the Accademia, but in 1919
it was returned to its original location over the main altar. It was
subsequently restored.

Giorgio Vasari gave a
brief description of the painting in his biography of Titian. It is obvious
that he saw the painting in person.

He
then executed the high-altar in the Church of the Friars Minors, called the Ca
Grande, a picture of Our Lady ascending into Heaven, and below her the twelve
Apostles, who are gazing upon her as she ascends; but of this work, from its
having been painted on cloth, and perhaps not well kept, there is little to be
seen. *

Vasari did not give much
thought or provide much analysis of the painting. He said that he could not see
it very well but I also suspect that he took it for granted that his readers
would have in their blood a full understanding of the background and
significance of the subject depicted.

Today, we no longer have
the theological or spiritual background that even an ordinary Venetian would
have had in the time of Titian. We almost have to approach paintings like the
Assunta as if we were trying to decipher the religious practices of some lost
tribe in the Amazon. Art historians almost have to act like archaeologists or
anthropologists in deciphering the art of the Renaissance.

The painting derives from
the medieval concept of the Dormition of Mary, the Madonna, the Virgin Mother
of God. According to legend, at the time when Mary’s time on earth was coming
to an end, she fell into a deep sleep. Miraculously, all the Apostles were
brought back from their far-flung missionary activity to be present at the end.
Then, her son Jesus would appear on the scene with a baby in his arms that
represented the soul of his mother that he was about to take up into Heaven.

Titian brought the
Apostles together at the base of his painting. Peter sits in the middle with an
open grave before him. A beardless John in red stands at the left clothed in
bright red. The other prominent figure dressed in red with his back to us could
either be James, the third of the triumvirate that witnessed the
Transfiguration, or Thomas, the doubter, shown in the act of reaching for the
Virgin’s girdle or sash, another popular legend.

But Titian has departed
from the typical Dormition account. Jesus does not appear to take his mother’s
soul to heaven. Mary has been raised from the dead by the Father. She has
triumphed over death just like her son. Her dress is the traditional red, the
color of her humanity, but her cloak is the traditional blue, the color of the
divinity. The colors recall the words of St. Paul that are still used in the
Catholic liturgy on the Feast of the Assumption.

When that which is mortal clothes itself with immortality,

then the word that is written shall come about:

'Death is swallowed up in victory.

where, O death, is your victory?

where, O death, is your sting?

The best discussion of the
sources and meaning of the painting can be found in Rona Goffen’s study, Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice,
still the best introduction to the art of the Venetian Renaissance. Below I include
an excerpt of her analysis of the source and meaning of Titian’s masterpiece, a sermon by
Lorenzo Giustiniani, the saintly first Patriarch of Venice, whose collected
sermons were published in Venice in 1506. **

There is another text, however, that can almost be
read as the libretto for Titian’s “opera,” and that is the sermon for the feast
of the Assumption by Lorenzo Giustiniani, the venerable first patriarch of
Venice. Giustiniani’s language in this sermon is derived from the great
biblical canticle of love, the Song of Songs. …

If we read Giustiniani’s sermon standing before the
Assunta—as, historically and theologically, one ought to do—then a significant
equivalence is revealed between the words and the image. The patriarch’s sermon
might almost be a description avant la lettre of Titian’s altarpiece; and, for
reasons that will become apparent, it seems that the artist or his Franciscan
patrons must indeed have been referring to Giustiniani’s text, or something
very like it. However,…their use of the text also involved a significant
editorial revision, so to speak. Whereas the patriarch described Mary’s
funeral, Titian alluded to it only indirectly and perforce by representing the
Apostles who had come to bury her.

Giustiniani introduced his narrative of the
Assumption with images of God’s redemptive love for mankind….Giustiniani’s
sermon closes with a reiteration of this theme of salvation and Mary’s role as
our benevolent mediatrix. Exalted as the queen of heaven “above the troops of
angels,” the Virgin turns her merciful gaze toward us…

Titian’s Assunta, “aflame with love,” is enframed
by the statue of the Redeemer above and, below, the tabernacle relief of the
man of Sorrows. Thus the Assunta, like Giustiniani’s sermon, is surrounded, as
it were, by the theme of God’s loving act of redemption and Mary’s role in
making this possible.

The Assumption is a joyous triumph: “today with
great joy the Virgin has triumphed in heaven, and she has seen what she desired
to see…And she saw…face to face, the face adorned with the whiteness of
immortality,…The patriarch continues…As she was free of every corruption of
mind and body, she was thus foreign to the pain of death”.

Mary’s assumption into heaven even evoked the
wonderment of the angels who witnessed it, as envisioned by Titian and
expressed in the question ascribed to them by Lorenzo Giustiniani, again
quoting the Song of Songs (3: 6 and 6: 9). The heavenly host exclaim: “Who is
this who comes to us with such a great party of angels, almost like the
breaking dawn, beautiful like the moon, elect like the sun…? Let us honor her
who comes to us like a pillar of smoke of the aromas of myrrh and of incense.”
Giustiniani went on to relate, and Titian to anticipate, how Christ greeted his
mother in heaven, addressing her in the language of the Canticle as he welcomed
her to her throne as Regina Coeli: “Come, my mother of Lebanon, come my dove,
my Immaculate one, my lovely one, gentle and dignified as Jerusalem, you will
be crowned…Ascend to the throne that I have prepared for you, take the crown
set with gems.”

In Giustiniani’s sermon, the Virgin responds to
this welcome with wonder and humility: “Have I merited this?...What can I
render to my Lord in exchange for all these things…? I shall choose the holy
words of customary humility that you have taught me. I shall not draw back, nor
shall I contradict, but consent to your will, with a reverent acquiescence of
mind, and with those same words that I spoke when I conceived you…Behold the
handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.”

Goffen argued that the
Assunta marked the beginning of a new era not only for Titian but also for
Venetian and European art. On the other hand, it also marked the end of an era.
In 1517, as Titian was working in his studio on the Assunta, Martin Luther was posting his 95 theses on a church door
in Wittenberg. Within a few years fanatical iconoclasts were destroying
paintings and statues of Mary all over Europe.

###

*Giorgio Vasari: Lives of
the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, translated by Gaston Du C. De Vere,
with an Introduction and Notes by David Ekserdjian, V. 2, New York, 1996. Pp.
785-6.